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Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Getting ready for the kids!

So I accomplished a ton at school today! Now that my room is finished and I have all of our new reading series put away neatly, I got started on getting materials ready for the first week of school. In our district, we have the first 5 days to meet with the kinders in small groups instead of them all arriving at once. We take that week to assess the kids with Brigance and Dibels to see where they are developmentally and academically. This will help us group them at the beginning of the year for our guided reading and math groups.

During that first week, our kindergarten team prefers to meet with the kids TWICE before they arrive with the whole class so they can learn the rules and procedures as well. So the first 3 days we'll split our class up into 3rds and try to get all of our assessing done then and work on lots of rules and procedures, with lots of center (social play) time to help them adjust to being in school. Then the last 2 days we'll split our classes in half and really drill the rules and procedures into the kids so that on their first day they know what to expect and how to behave. We did this last year and it worked wonderfully!

So I've been getting ready for the testing week and our first full day with all the kids! I'll tell you first.... if you're a kindergarten teacher and haven't purchased the "Crazy for Kinders" Unit by Abby (from Inspired Apple)... I recommend it! I loved her activities to go with The First Day Jitters! Also, Julie Lee has a wonderful "All About Me" unit that has some great beginning of the year activities for the kids. I like to do a few cute craftivites with the kids that first week since I can have more attention to help them in a small group versus the whole class! I am in no way promoting for these ladies, as they do just fine on their own b/c they are so amazing! But in case your wondering where I got my ideas... that is where! =)

So here are some pictures of what I have been up to today!

Our
first day of school graph. I'll take the kids picture and let them
place it above how they feel on their 1st day! excited? happy? scared?
or sad? (Abby's "Crazy for Kinders" unit has a recording sheet for the kids to use too!)

All the craft pieces for the boy/girl graph and our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree names are ready to go! From Julie Lee's "All About Me" unit.

Our
hallway display. It currently is holding my kindergartners writing from
last year with their "words of advice" for the new kinders! So funny! (inspired by one of my favorites: Life in 1st Grade)

I'm
so excited about our new leveled readers that came with our new reading
series! These ones are SOOOO much better than the old ones!

New reading series is nicely put away.

All my beginning of the year books ready to use!

Thanks to my awesome pal, Lisa
for making these! Once they are laminated, I'll put the kids pictures
on one when they can count to 100, another when they can name all the
letters (lowercase and uppercase) and on the third when they can name
all the letter sounds correctly!

Can't
wait to make jitter juice for the kids this year! After reading "The First Day Jitters" we'll read the poem. The poem is about how
the jitter juice helps us get rid of the "first day jitters" and
settles the nerves in our tummies. Then we'll make tally marks and graph
if they liked them or not. On the first day with ALL my kinders, we'll
count them all and add them up to see how many kids are in our class. It's going to be so fun!

Tomorrow my plan is to get our "No, David" and "David Goes to School" charts ready! We're going to make the Peacemakers and Peace-breakers charts as seen HERE. The original idea came from Julie Lee and you can read about it HERE. I also need to get the craft pieces together so the kids can make their own "No, David!" We have lots of fun planned!